The name comes from the dying words of James Lawrence to the crew of his USS Chesapeake, later stitched into an ensign created by Purser Samuel Hambleton and raised by Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry in the Battle of Lake Erie, during the War of 1812.

There Dave Arneson displayed some of his 1:1200 sailing ship models, and in a subsequent discussion of my attempt he mentioned that his group [the MMSA] in Minneapolis-St. Paul were currently developing just such a set of rules.

The early rules show a significant debt to Fletcher Pratt's naval wargame system, which Arneson had played heavily in the Twin Cities.

Later, in the pages of the International Wargamer, Arneson would also publish a list of fighting ships of the Great Age of Sail for use in naval miniature simulations.

The rules that Gygax and Arneson developed call for pencil and paper, six-sided dice, rulers and protractors, and model ships, ideally of 1:1200 scale.

Arneson had previously played Fletcher Pratt wargames on a classroom floor at the University of Minnesota, and the distances in Don't Give Up the Ship also exceed the dimensions of a tabletop.

The conclusion of the book provides the statistics necessary to re-enact historical encounters such as took place between the USS Constitution and HMS Guerriere on August 19, 1812.

From a September 1972 introduction written by Gary Gygax which is attached to surviving drafts, it would appear that Guidon Games originally planned to publish Ships of the Line.